Now, I'm sure, this was predictable, the way he waved his poms-poms for The Bush Grindhouse, giving them leather-lunged "Sis-Boom-Bahs", all the way into Baghdad, keeping the creases crisp in his poodle skirt.

What did he do today?

Nothing, other then open The Dubya Legacy Registry (found were finer NeoNitWit merchandise is sold), with a laundry list that, undoubtedly, will get picked up by the other Flying Monkeys in the Right Wing Freak Show.

After slapping the PNAC dildo on the table, for the military, and waving it, menacingly, at the incoming Obama Administration, to not go after the dwarf, finks, phonies and frauds who carried out Darth Vader Cheney's orders to piss-and-shit on The Constitution, Little Billy scribbled this;

One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning--and should at least be vociferously praising--everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.

Got that?

"...demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points ..."

By the time this bounces around the echo chamber, via the deadwood at Faux News, Rush, Matt Sludge, Rich Lowry (if he's cleared the starbursts out of his eyes), Prom Dress Boy, the rancid swizzle stick with the eye patch, and all the others, I half expect to see them all, a full bleacher section, on Pennsylvania Avenue, on Inauguration Day, heckling, and harassing President Obama, holding up signs, chanting "No War Crimes! ... No War Crimes! ... Hell No, Let Bush and Cheney Go! ... Hell No, Let Bush and Cheney Go!"

Watch how this will open the flood gates, the revisionism of the Bush Grindhouse officially kicks off, thanks to Little Billy Kristol.

Never mind, for every pat-on-the-back, every hosanna, every bon mot, there's, likely, three different criminal felony charges that could be leveled on Dubya and Darth.

No, Little Billy, we will not pardon anyone, or vociferously praise anyone.

Well, it appears, for now, anyway, we won't be seeing any "Tweety for Senator" signs popping up.

We wrote yesterday, the rampaging rumors that Matthews was gearing up for a 2010 run, ostensibly, against Republican Arlen Specter, should Tweety survive the college-prank-overstuffed phone booth, that likely would have surfaced for the Penn. Dem Primary.

Word comes via Nate Silver, at FiveThirtyEight.com, that Matthews has "flatly denied our report indicating his active hiring for the Pennsylvania Senate seat currently held by Arlen Specter.

"It is absolutely not true," said Matthews, in a statement."

Guess he's not feeling that thrill up his leg ... Yet ...

For, if we want to make like the Big Dog Pundits, spending hours parsing his statement, we could point to the fact that he didn't actually say he wasn't running, just that he was denying the reports that he is hiring staff for such a run.

Stay tuned Tweety Fans ... I'm sure this isn't the last time we'll have "clear-cut signals" of Tweety shopping for soap boxes to deliver campaign speeches from ...

It's almost incomprehensible that people would be that rabid, over, making a purchase, mind you, this wasn't some free giveaway of Soylent Green, or anything.

Just what was so compelling, that X-amount of people lost all of their social bearings, their humanity, over?

Items on sale at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart included a Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV for $798, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as "The Incredible Hulk" for $9.

Cheap consumer items, more than likely, all manufactured overseas, by people in dreadful factories, being paid sub-livable wages, in jobs that, perhaps, once were based in this country, but farmed out under the flag of downsizing, and free trade quotas

NEW YORK – Police were reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a Wal-Mart worker after a crowd of post-Thanksgiving shoppers burst through the doors at a suburban store and knocked him down.

I truly hope that the Nassau County officials pursue this vigorously, as well as bringing criminal charges against Wal-Mart.

This should not be swept under the carpet, as "too difficult".

There is, apparently, video of the stampede, there's certainly numerous still photos (the photo gallery offered yesterday), and, presumably, X-amount of those animalistic shoppers used debit and credit cards, to make their blood-soaked purchases.

They actually complained about the store closing, due to the death of the employee;

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling `I've been on line since yesterday morning,'" she said. "They kept shopping."

Here is what happens when you get a bunch of American shopper's together without supervision - and of course, it would happen at Wal-Mart where everything is from China, polluted and tainted, and where employees are treated like slaves. When you willingly support a company with such little regard for human rights, worker rights, and so forth, the community that springs up around it will be just as contaminated. The worst is yet to come, however ...

Snip ...

My god, for shame! People around the world are dying of starvation and this polluted populace could not wait to buy electronics to the point of killing someone? For shame!

Snip ...

You read that right. Even after these people learned that their actions lead to the murder of a store clerk, they refused to leave the store and wanted to keep shopping. Oh, and as for Wal-Mart? Well, like I said, pollution feeds on pollution and sick feeds on sick. Sure they closed their doors long enough to get the dead-employee off their pretty floors. But then they re-opened shortly after.

What, Wal-Mart could not lose some money from one store where employees were traumatized, where an employee had been killed, where such a thing occurred? They could not take a day off to at least, if nothing else, to teach the community a lesson? No, because what can sick teach sick? For shame!

This weekend, today and tomorrow (Saturday and Sunday), are the last days of voting.

We need your help.

If you would, take a few moments to vote for The Garlic ...

Currently, The Garlic is sitting in 5th Place, just a handful of votes out of 3rd Place ... That may be enough to make the final cut, however, we could use the cushion of moving up in the voting, as well as warding off a few others that are just a few votes behind The Garlic.

So, use the links below to go out and vote!

The Weblog Awards makes it incredibly simple, no fussing around with signing in, or registering, just use the link below, and it should only take a few seconds.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Shop! Shop! Shop yourself into debt!Bargains, Bargains, Bargains and if you shop yourself to deathTell Saint Peter at the Golden GateThat you hate to make him waitBut you just got to have that Wal-Mart-priced TV set.

Black Friday.

Search Google and you'll get over 22-million results, the majority of it having to do with shopping, bargains and deals.

Wikipedia offers that it is "not an official holiday, but many employees have the day off, which increases the number of potential shoppers."

Retailers often decorate for the Christmas season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open very early (typically 5 am or even earlier) and offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the modern Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term "Black Friday" has been traced back only to the 1960s.

The term "Black Friday" originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day. (see 'Origin of the name' below) More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black (i.e., turning a profit).

Snip ..

The local media often will cover the event, mentioning how early the shoppers began lining up at various stores and providing video of the shoppers standing in line and later leaving with their purchased items. Traditionally Black Friday sales were intended for those shopping for Christmas gifts. For some particularly popular items, some people shop at these sales in order to get deep discounts on items they can then resell, typically online.[citation needed]

Yes, local (and national) media covers the event, cheerleading it, like it was some kind of championship game, and we had, or are supposed to have, some kind of emotional investment in it.

"Go Macy's Go! ... Go, Macy's Go!"

Well, this year, today, that cheerleading took on the aura of old Rome, with the Roman cheering for the lions in the Coliseum.

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old employee, a temporary maintenance worker, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk's life.

She probably would have conducted an interview, right in front of the emergency workers, oblivious to their rescue efforts.

We've seen these type of scenes for years now.

People (perhaps a good snapshot of those outside our mental healthcare network), lined up in the dark of night, in sleeping bags, tents pitched, all building up the anxiety, the adrenaline, proverbial steam coming out of their ears, to go charging the store at the stroke of dawn (locally, here, Kohl's was running their "Super Special" beginning at 4AM!).

It's become an annual stock footage time for the media, to tout whatever economic news of the year is, and how wonderful it is to see consumers out shopping, like juiced lab rats, in a gigantic, cheese-less maze.

Just about the same time this morning, that those Wal-Mart shoppers in Long Island, were snorting, and scrapping their feet on the ground, readying to blast through the doors, the New York Times Friday edition was rolling out, and in it, Paul Krugman's column, reminding us, just like the Black Friday Shopping Horror stories, we've been there, done this.

From "Lest We Forget";

One answer to these questions is that nobody likes a party pooper. While the housing bubble was still inflating, lenders were making lots of money issuing mortgages to anyone who walked in the door; investment banks were making even more money repackaging those mortgages into shiny new securities; and money managers who booked big paper profits by buying those securities with borrowed funds looked like geniuses, and were paid accordingly. Who wanted to hear from dismal economists warning that the whole thing was, in effect, a giant Ponzi scheme?

Snip ...

For once the economy is on the road to recovery, the wheeler-dealers will be making easy money again — and will lobby hard against anyone who tries to limit their bottom lines. Moreover, the success of recovery efforts will come to seem preordained, even though it wasn’t, and the urgency of action will be lost.

So here’s my plea: even though the incoming administration’s agenda is already very full, it should not put off financial reform. The time to start preventing the next crisis is now.

These same people making money in the short term will scream too much regulation is a bad thing (because it diminishes confidence). How much regulation is too much? Any regulation. If you doubt this, consider how many more people are asking for bailout money compared to regulation.

Going back to the Wal-Mart thing, how many people will call for regulation of Wal-Marts, and other retailers, Black Friday extravaganzas?

Perhaps, next year, the stock stories and footage will carry some courtroom action.

The 200 or so crazed shoppers literally took the doors off the building in their rush to get that $600 wide screen TV. The store should be held criminally responsible for the deaths for creating the shopping frenzy and failing to provide proper crowd control. Sending a couple of underpaid, overworked stock clerks to hold back the mob is nothing short of negligent homicide.

The stampeding throng took the doors off the hinges and simply stomped the clerk to death as a co-worker looked on helplessly. (The clerk’s family should have — in addition to an oh-so-Merry Christmas — a superb wrongful death suit, given that this is hardly the first such event and there was clearly warning that a fatality could occur.)

Must be part of the War on Christmas. /sarcasm.

Yeah, that would be the right thing to do.

And to make it comfortable for the retailers, and potential witnesses, the courts can hold sessions at 5AM, or, 6AM, maybe get through the proceedings so everybody still has time to go out and shop.

Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania can get into the act to, stretch out their product and rake in some bucks.

They can roust out their famous prognosticator, Phil, and predict what type of Black Friday it's going to be, depending on whether or not the groundhog sees his shopping bag, or not.

“The embarrassment can no longer be missed,” Wolff wrote, in another section of the book. “He mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it. He barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.”

According to Wolff, Murdoch's desire not to be defined solely by his ownership of Fox underlay his purchase last year of the Wall Street Journal, which "was in no small way about wanting to trade the illiberal -- the belligerent, the vulgar, the loud, the menacing the unsubtle -- for the better-heeled, the more magnanimous, the further nuanced."

When Chris Matthews said, "I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work," it was all about a potential senate run. In fact, we'll find very few anti-Obama remarks on Hardball until (and if) Matthews announces he's not going to run. The short explanation is that if Matthews wants to unseat Arlen Specter, he's going to need the White House.

FiveThirtyEight has been hearing for some time that Matthews is serious about running for the United States Senate, but it took a trip to Georgia among the Georgia-runoff-congregated and well-connected Obama organizer throng to confirm.

According to multiple sources, who confirmed the Tip O'Neill staffer-cum-MSNBC host has negotiated with veteran Obama staffers to enlist in his campaign, Chris Matthews is likely to run for United States Senate in Pennsylvania in 2010. Matthews, 62, would run as a Democrat. Arlen Specter, the aging Republican incumbent, will be 80 if he chooses to run for re-election.

Preliminary public polling suggests Matthews would start at a deficit, in part because Matthews' name recognition is lower than Specter's.

My money says, while it may be tempting, the lure of going from a former staffer to holding the office may be an alluring pull that Matthews finds it hard to step away from.

That is, until someone with sanity that hangs around him points to the MSNBC Tape Vault, and miles-and-miles of videotape that would have a Matthews Campaign in a permanent Press Conference mode, explaining away his gaffes and inane comments.

As for Matthews' chances, your guess is as good as mine. I glanced through Media Matters' recent hits on Matthews' on-air comments, and it's safe to assume the MSNBC host would have a lot of explaining to do before Pennsylvania Democrats gave him the nod.

And just in case, Matthews doesn't hear that friend, someone else can paint him a picture that should resonate.

Scene, the first debate, Matthews, with, at least, three other candidates ... Matthew gives a complicated, long-winded, foolish answer to some question, and all it will take, for any of the other candidates to neutralize him for the rest of the campaign, is for one to look at him and repeat the lament about his colleague, Morning Joke, plastering Tweety with;

Humorous observation:Hit the local Whole Foods Market, where there was a line, waiting, for the smaller-sized shopping carts they provide (and every other supermarket should follow suit, instead of pushing around their 1970's-Cadillac-sized ones)... I couldn't resist .. Walked a few feet down to the register area, retrieved an empty, small-sized cart no longer being used, and walked by the line waiting ...

And, taking a spin out on the World Wide Web, I espied two rather interesting posts, one bemoaning tomorrow's main course, the other, enlightening, offering an alternative;

Ever noticed that your favorite dishes from your traditional family Thanksgiving are all sides? And that that one time you had Thanksgiving dinner outside your traditional family gathering the best dishes there were sides? And how when your friends organized a fauxsgiving festival the week before Thanksgiving the best dishes were sides? That’s because turkey doesn’t taste good.

So as long as turkey is going to sit like a colossus atop the Thanksgiving meal, we may as well figure out a way to reduce its suck factor. Brining is certainly a player here, as are rubs, smaller turkeys, and aromatics. But we need to be bolder.

As Mark Bittman says, part of the problem with Thanksgiving turkey is that we insist on cooking it whole. This is a big bird. By the time the thickest, most protected meat is cooked through, Much of the rest has the pleasing texture of dirt cake. It's true that a series of labor and time intensive techniques (like brining) can mildly counteract that, but you can only take it so far.

Lucky for me and my co-turkey mates, in Ann Arbor's near environs there are now a number of farmers growing heritage turkeys--and at way cheaper prices than the heritage turkey I bought last year. These are, of course, turkeys that still taste like turkey, rather than saline-injected protein delivery systems.

And for those of you briners searching for an easier way to cook the perfect bird--and yes, even for Spencer, with his salivating over bacon-wrapped pork--the real trick is bacon.

Yes, bacon.

Just slap a pound of bacon on top. It's the perfect way to slowly apply salt to the meat and it keeps the bird perfectly moist without basting. And by the time the Detroit Lions manage to lose another game, that bacon's perfectly cooked for a mid-afternoon snack, just when it's time to start browning the bird.

Check them out, or better yet, read them at the dinner table to see how the rest of the family reacts.

If you haven't already gone dysfunctional, having been argument-free up to this point, this discussion may kick it in gear.

Rumors have circulated around Washington, that Mukasey has been "doctor shopping", seeking one that will give a diagnosis of continued trouble, and provide the Attorney General with a note, indicating he should "stay home and rest, until, at minimum, late January".

I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protesters of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O'Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, "There you go, again."

You see, last week, the guy that put a Contract On America, figures, he can't concede the race for 2012 this early, to Mommy Moose, so he threw a big, meat-laden bone out to the dregs of base (where else, on Faux News, with The Loofah Man);

Summary: Discussing actions by individual protesters of Proposition 8, Newt Gingrich stated: "I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion."

Back to Candice;

The truth is that you're living in a world that no longer exists. I, along with millions of Americans, clearly see the world the way it as -- and we embrace what it can be. You, on the other hand, seem incapable of looking for new ideas or moving beyond what worked in the past.

Welcome to the 21st century, big bro. I can understand why you're so afraid of the energy that has been unleashed after gay and lesbian couples had their rights stripped away from them by a hateful campaign. I can see why you're sounding the alarm against the activists who use all the latest tech tools to build these rallies from the ground up in cities across the country.

Oh, you can almost hear the 2012 DEP right now, speaker-after-speaker banging the podium, red-in-the-face, tossing off "Family Values" and "God's will" every other sentence.

The state Supreme Court plunged back into the same-sex marriage wars Wednesday, agreeing to decide the legality of a ballot measure that repealed the right of gay and lesbian couples to wed in California.

Six months after its momentous ruling that struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, the court granted requests by both sponsors and opponents of Proposition 8 to review lawsuits challenging the Nov. 4 initiative.

Approved by 52 percent of voters, Prop. 8 restored the definition of marriage - a union of a man and a woman - that the court had overturned May 15. Kennard and Moreno voted with the majority in that 4-3 ruling.

And, do you know what was a major factor behind the pro-Prop. 8 neanderthals?

The campaign issued an urgent appeal, and in a matter of days, it raised more than $5 million, including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive to intensify a sharp-elbowed advertising campaign, and support for the measure was catapulted ahead; it ultimately won with 52 percent of the vote. [snip] The California measure, Proposition 8, was to many Mormons a kind of firewall to be held at all costs.

“California is a huge state, often seen as a bellwether — this was seen as a very, very important test,” Mr. Otterson said.

San Francisco Roman Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer has a featured role in The Times' story as well, although the article neglects to mention his previous role as Archbishop of Salt Lake City for eleven years

I guess, being persecuted for being different doesn't carry the same cache these days, as it did when ol' Joe Smith was getting chased away, half way across the country.

The kind of person who contributes money to deny their fellow citizens their civil rights are not someday magically going to be part of the solution: they're the problem. These are not people to be reasoned with; they're ignorant, they're haters and they're bigots and the only thing people like that understand is power.

Hmmm ... I don't think Ol' Joe Smith would be hip to giving away millions of his money ... I mean, how was he going to fund, and support that convenient revelation of "The more wives, the merrier!"?

Ahh, but the noise volume, is, in all likelihood, going to go way beyond a deafening crescendo.

If the California Supreme Court strikes down Prop. 8, you can expect that to go to the Nine-In-Black, and couple that with the pressure on the Obama Administration, to work with the Dem-Majority Congress to sweep out the 'Defense of Marriage Act', there's the Dying Elephants 2012 platform right there.

Perkins and Dobson, as well as the deadwood, but powerless, Republicans in Congress will go full-bore Elmer Gantry in stoking the base that the End of Days is coming.

Obama can stand on the South Lawn, over a bonfire of burning dollar bills and that won't register a hoot with these people.

They will become rabid and tunnel-visioned, continuing the Bush Grindhouse legacy of Us vs.Them.

So, we'll go with the final word here, used by Candice to her big Bro, to sum things up;

What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions. That's really so '90s, Newt. In this day and age, it's embarrassing to watch you talk like that. You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it.

The boaters realize with growing dismay that the crowd that has gathered on the shore has not come to help them fight off the beast. They are actually cheering for the creature who has boarded the boat! What can this mean?! Why do they hate us?! Quick, offer this thing a sandwiche or something!

But neither the creature, nor the townsfolk on the shore will be deterred. The creature has made itself quite comfortable on the boat, and is now sitting, and has actually begun to row the boat ashore (Hallelujah!) with the intent of delivering the trembling crew right into the middle of the mob of agitated townsfolk….

It’s amazing what can be brought to life with some good old fashioned community organizing. What all this means is that Alaskans for Truth is now an official Political Action Committee, registered with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. And they have issued a call to action.

And what would this "Call to Action be?

Rather than to try to figure out how to get our creature to pull something out of his non-existant pocket, and read an eloquent call to action, I’ll just give you a link to the Alaskans for Truth website, which spells it all out. What do they want?

1. Censure of the Governor for violating the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. 2. Penalties for the state employees and Todd Palin who ignored subpoenas. 3. Hold hearings on whether Governor Palin and her husband committed perjury in their sworn statement to Timothy Petumenos. 4. An independent investigation into Attorney General Talis Colberg’s alleged witness tampering in the Troopergate investigation.

Hmmm ... Sounds a lot different than the Palin Truth Squad we wrote about, wondering if they got per diems too, and, flashing that big, giant "P" in the sky, whenever someone told the truth about Mommy Moose.

Ahhh , but that was the dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds Palin Truth Squad.

Here's to the Alaskans for Truth, and their success, so that we can have a quieter 2012, leaving only the other Republican nitwits to fight it out.

If this had happened in the USA, I suspect, we'd be in Day Three of a Right Wing Freak Show blizzard, on how conspicuous for this to occur, on the heels of Barack Obama being elected.Can you say Alien Muslim?

No doubt, now that he has the White House, this blazing light was none other then the rest of the inhabitants of Obama's planet coming to colonize Earth .

Comment dit-on, la Commission canadienne du Area 51?

The buzz that has Canadian (and I suspect, scores around the world) sporting tented-type pants today, is the footage, caught by a police dash cam, of a blazing, bright, assumed meteor, streaking over the Western Canada skies

A bright light lit up the sky around 5:30 MT Thursday evening in Western Canada, with people reporting sightings in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

People telephoned the CBC newsrooms in Edmonton and Calgary to talk about what they saw.

"It was a really big flash, lit up the sky, and there was this huge, flaming fireball falling from the sky," said Rowyn Windsor, 12, who lives on the Canadian Forces base in Cold Lake, Alta., about 350 kilometres northeast of Edmonton.

And with this being a the Thanksgiving Holiday week, you can expect to see this story overplayed in the media, particularly, on local news outlets, completely with inane, "They're Here!" banter from the co-anchors, with silly clichés invoking movies from 'E.T.' to 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'.

Fix Iraq

About Me

J. Thomas Duffy created and lauched 'The Garlic in 2005.
Mr. Duffy is an accomplished writer, with experience as a newspaper reporter, radio writer, comedy and stand-up writer, the author of three children's books (unpublished, so far) and, and, through a good number of his writing experience, actually received payment for it.
Mr. Duffy is also a Contributing Editor on the blog, 'The Reaction' and a Contributing Writer to the blog 'The Moderate Voice.
In his spare time, Mr. Duffy likes to promulgate that is actually the dog salivating that caused Pavlov to ring the bell.